Free Fall

by Chris Grabenstein

  “Huh?”

  “The weight limitation.”

  “You don’t have to answer that, Benjamin,” says Bob.

  “Yes, he does,” says Ceepak. “Mr. Sinclair? The manufacturer’s suggested weight limitation?”

  Sinclair shrugs. “I dunno. Two fatties and one dude with a big butt?”

  Ceepak turns to face Bob again.

  “You will not be opening your ride any time soon.”

  “Wait a minute … the State.…”

  “We will inform the State of your failure to comply with five-fourteen-A dash four point eight.”

  “Do you know how much money …”

  “I’m not interested in financial details. But, rest assured, Bob, this ride will remain closed until such time as you hire a certified operator who has been trained by the manufacturer to operate the ride in accordance with the manual and any supplemental safety bulletins, safety alerts, or other notices related to operational requirements.”

  Poor Bob. Ceepak memorized more of the rulebook than he did.

  “Danny?”

  “Sir?”

  “We’re done here.”

  We turn to leave.

  “Sore losers!” mutters Bob.

  We turn back around.

  “I beg your pardon?” says Ceepak.

  “I know what’s going on here. You two are still upset about the election. First you haul Hugh’s kid off to jail on a trumped-up charge. Now this crap about operator certificates? Face it, boys, you backed the wrong horse. Adkinson lost. Sinclair won. Get over it.”

  Ceepak simply smiles.

  “Hire a certified operator, Bob.”

  “We will.”

  “Then it’s all good.”

  And this time when we turn to leave, we turn and leave.

  All the other rides we inspect during the week pass, even the ones owned by Sinclair Enterprises.

  His other operators all know their height requirements and weight limitations. “Two fatties and one dude with a big butt” is never the correct answer.

  After work on Friday, Ceepak invites me to join him at his mother’s condo for dinner.

  “If you have no other plans this evening.”

  I don’t. So I do.

  Ceepak’s wife, Rita, is working the Friday night dinner rush at Morgan’s Surf and Turf, so it’ll just be Ceepak, Adele, and me.

  Mrs. Ceepak lives in an Active Adult Retirement Community called The Oceanaire. You have to check in at the gatehouse and be announced before the guards will even let you drive along the winding road that snakes around The Oceanaire’s clubhouse and meanders through its manicured landscape of 25 semi-identical cape-style homes.

  Mrs. Ceepak is waiting for us on the front porch of her unit. It’s brand-new; neat and tidy.

  “You like spaghetti and meatballs, Daniel?” she says when we climb out of my Jeep.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say.

  “Good. I know John does. Come on in. Let’s eat. And then you boys need to help me find a good lawyer.”

  12

  “WHY EXACTLY DO YOU NEED A LAWYER, MOTHER?” CEEPAK asks as we pass around the wooden salad bowl that has its own wooden salad-tossing forks.

  I wonder if I’ll ever own the kind of stuff Mrs. Ceepak has in her snug and cozy little home. Silverware that actually matches. Serving bowls. Drinking glasses that aren’t movie souvenirs from Burger King. A framed needlepoint sampler and Princess Diana plates hanging on the walls.

  Do you get the complete home starter kit when you finally decide to grow up and settle down? Or do you just collect stuff along the way?

  “The lawyer’s not for me, John,” says Mrs. Ceepak as she passes the breadbasket, which is actually a basket lined with a checkered cloth to keep the bread warm. “It’s for a friend of mine’s caregiver. A gentleman named Arnold Rosen.”

  “The one who lives on Beach Lane?”

  “That’s right. Do you know him? He’s ninety-four. Comes with his nurse to our afternoon bingo games at the senior center.”

  “Is the nurse named Christine?” I ask.

  “Yes! Do you boys know her, too?”

  “Yes, ma’am. She’s a friend of a friend.”

  “Danny knows just about everybody in Sea Haven,” says Ceepak.

  “Well, this Christine is very pretty, Daniel. Has those dark Mediterranean features. Big brown eyes. Nice figure, too. From what I’ve picked up at the bingo games, she’s a single gal. You should ask her out on a date. Nothing too flashy. Maybe just coffee or a light lunch. Definitely not a movie. You don’t really get to chat at the movies …”

  Across the table, Ceepak is grinning at me.

  I guess now that her son is all settled down, it’s Adele Ceepak’s mission to fix me up so I can start collecting matching salad bowls of my own.

  “Something to think about,” I mumble and pop a plum tomato into my mouth so I don’t have to say anything else.

  “Why, exactly, does Christine need a lawyer?” asks Ceepak.

  “Oh, some nonsense about attacking a former employer.”

  Okay. I put down my salad fork. “Mrs. Shona Oppenheimer?”

  “That’s right. Do you know her, too, Daniel?”

  “Not really. I was on duty last Friday night and caught a call to investigate an altercation at the Oppenheimer home between Mrs. Oppenheimer and Ms. Lemonopolous.”

  “Danny and his partner were the first on the scene,” adds Ceepak.

  “Then you know this is all a bunch of hooey. No way did a sweet girl like Christine Lemonopolous ‘attack’ this Mrs. Oppenheimer. But Mrs. Oppenheimer, whose late husband I hear was a big Wall Street muckety-muck, has a boatload of money and bamboozled some judge into issuing what they call a TRO against Christine.”

  “A TRO is a Temporary Restraining Order,” explains Ceepak.

  “Oh. So it’s not permanent?”

  “Not until there is a formal hearing, which must take place within ten days of the filing of the TRO.”

  Ceepak knows a thing or two about how restraining orders work in the state of New Jersey. He should. He had one issued against his drunken father the first time Joe “Sixpack” Ceepak stumbled into town.

  “Well, I want Christine to have the best lawyer in the state of New Jersey,” says Mrs. Ceepak. “Do you boys know any crackerjack criminal defense attorneys? Because that’s what Dr. Rosen says Christine is going to need to beat this thing. He says Mrs. Oppenheimer is probably assuming that Christine won’t have the financial means to defend herself so she can just steamroll right over the poor girl.”

  Ceepak leans back from his mountain of spaghetti and erects a two-handed tapping finger tent under his nose. This is what he does sometimes when he thinks.

  I use the free time to spear a crouton.

  “If I were in a similar predicament,” Ceepak finally says, “I would want Harvey Nussbaum to defend me.”

  Ceepak’s right. Nussbaum is a pit bull. I’ve seen his ads on a couple benches up and down Ocean Avenue. “I Turn Wrongs Into Rights!” is his slogan. His mascot is a snarling bulldog wearing one of those curly lawyer wigs the barristers wear over in England.

  “Good,” says his mother. “Let’s hire this Harvey Nussbaum.”

  “Wait a second,” I say. “You want to pay for Christine’s lawyer?”

  “Heavens, yes. Somebody has to! I’m sure she’s earning little more than minimum wage working for Dr. Rosen. She can’t afford a lawyer. The girl doesn’t even have a home of her own. She’s living in Arnie’s house in a guest bedroom.”

  “Mother,” says Ceepak, “an expert criminal defense attorney such as Harvey Nussbaum can cost upwards of three hundred dollars per billable hour.”

  “So? I’m rich, remember?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Besides, this is what Aunt Jennifer would want me to do with all that money she left me. See that sampler on the wall?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I was admiring it earlier.”

&nbs
p; “Well, it originally belonged to Aunt Jennifer. Did you read what it says, Daniel?”

  “No. I couldn’t really make out the words …”

  Mrs. Ceepak pushes back her chair.

  “I’ll get it, Mother,” says her son.

  “Thank you, dear.”

  Ceepak goes to the wall and carefully lifts the framed sampler off its hook.

  “Read it,” says his mom.

  Ceepak’s not much on making speeches (another reason he hated being Chief of Police so much). But he does what his mother tells him to.

  He reads the needlepointed words:

  “Do all the good you can,

  By all the means you can,

  In all the ways you can,

  In all the places you can,

  At all the times you can,

  To all the people you can,

  As long as ever you can.”

  Okay. I think I finally know how Ceepak became Ceepak. He inherited it from his Great Aunt Jennifer.

  “That’s a quote from John Wesley,” says Mrs. Ceepak. “He wasn’t a Catholic but, still, it’s a good prayer.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” says Ceepak.

  “So you’ll call this Harvey Nussbaum for Christine?”

  “Danny and I will pay Ms. Lemonopolous a visit tomorrow. We will advise her of your generous offer and see if that is how she would like to proceed.”

  “Good. Now eat your spaghetti before your meatballs get cold.”

  And, once again, Ceepak and I both do like his mother says.

  13

  IF I EVER NEEDLEPOINT A SAMPLER TO HANG ON MY WALL, I think it’ll be these lyrics from Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost Of Tom Joad”:

  Wherever there’s somebody fightin’ for a place to stand

  Or a decent job or a helpin’ hand

  Wherever somebody’s strugglin’ to be free

  Look in their eyes Mom you’ll see me.

  From the live version, of course—the one with Tom Morello from Rage Against The Machine wailing on the fuzz-box electric guitar solos; not Bruce’s original acoustic version off the Nebraska album.

  So, first thing Saturday morning, I text Christine to let her know Ceepak and I want to swing by and talk with her about the TRO, maybe even lend her a “helpin’ hand.”

  “DO YOU GUYS NEED A COPY?” she texts back.

  “COULDN’T HURT,” I thumb to her.

  “OK. C U IN A FEW.”

  I swing by the Bagel Lagoon to pick up Ceepak.

  He’s sitting with Rita and their dog, Barkley, at the bottom of the attached staircase that leads up to their apartment.

  “Hey, Danny,” says Rita.

  “Hey.”

  Barkley doesn’t bark. He slumps to the ground. And farts. Barkley is old.

  Ceepak fans the air in front of his face. “Sorry about that.”

  “That’s okay,” I say. “All I smell are the onions and garlic coming out of the kitchen’s exhaust fan.”

  Rita knuckle-punches Ceepak in his bulging arm muscle. “See? I told you not to let Barkley have a bite of your bagel.”

  “My bad,” says Ceepak. He raises a brown paper sack. “Thought we’d take Christine and Dr. Rosen some fresh-baked bagels this morning.”

  “Sounds like a plan. They’re expecting us.”

  “Then it’s all good.”

  Ceepak kisses Rita.

  “This won’t take too long,” he says when they finally break.

  “Hurry home.”

  “Roger that.”

  And they kiss again. I look up and pretend like I’m fascinated by the Bagel Lagoon’s gutter system or something. Ceepak and Rita? They don’t need a Tunnel of Love. They smooch whenever and wherever they feel like smooching.

  Even if Barkley cuts the cheese.

  Which, of course, he does.

  Onions and garlic, again.

  With a hint of pumpernickel.

  On the ride over to Dr. Rosen’s house, Ceepak drifts into his super-serious analytical mode.

  “You say Mrs. Oppenheimer was strangling Christine when you and Santucci entered her home?”

  “That’s what it looked like to me. The ligature bruises on Christine’s neck were so bad, I made a photographic record for evidence—in case we ever needed it.”

  “Good crime-scene technique, Danny.”

  “Hey, don’t forget, I was trained by the best.”

  Ceepak, of course, totally ignores the compliment.

  “Mrs. Oppenheimer was strangling Christine,” he muses, “yet she is the one requesting the restraining order? Curious.”

  “She probably wants to beat Christine to the punch; stop Christine from requesting a restraining order against her.”

  “It’s a possibility, Danny.”

  I can tell that this case, if we can call it that, intrigues him. Ceepak’s a lot like Sherlock Holmes. He’s not happy unless his big brain is busy noodling out a solution to a puzzling problem.

  A very pretty African-American woman, about the same age as Christine, greets us at the door.

  She’s wearing royal blue nurse’s scrubs and toting a plastic pill organizer; a big one with 28 compartments. I’m guessing Dr. Rosen’s on a lot of medications—maybe one for every year of his life.

  “Are you Danny?” she asks.

  “That’s right. And this is my partner, John Ceepak.”

  “I’m Monae Dunn,” she says with a smile. She has a good one. Her long, straight hair is pulled back with a headband the same bright blue as the rest of her uniform.

  “Is Christine here?” asks Ceepak. Probably because he isn’t busy admiring Monae’s body like some people I know.

  “No. She ran over to Kinko’s, so I’m covering. Trying to get Dr. Rosen’s medicines organized. You ever know anybody to need so many pills? I bet this blue one is to prevent him from having side effects from this green one.” She sees Ceepak’s brown paper bag. “Did you boys bring bagels?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” says Ceepak. “Fresh-baked.”

  “Uhm-hmm,” she says knowingly. “Well don’t just stand there letting them go all cold. Come on in. Arnie’s on the phone with his son Michael. Michael lives in Hollywood. He’s a gay.”

  Ceepak and I just nod.

  “They’re on speakerphone because Arnie refuses to put in his hearing aids when he knows company is coming.”

  We follow Ms. Dunn into the house, which looks like it hasn’t been redecorated since 1960-something. Except for the walls. Those looks like an art museum dedicated to a single subject: the life and times of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy with a fantastic smile. There must be over two dozen framed photographs of the same shaggy-haired kid. Blowing out birthday candles. Playing baseball. Riding a BMX bike. At Disney World. Sea World. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. LEGOLAND.

  I have a feeling the blonde boy is Dr. Rosen’s grandson, even though he’s so good-looking that he could also be the kid who came with the picture frames.

  We move into what I’m guessing used to be the dining room. Now there is a hospital bed set up where the table used to be—a look that doesn’t really fit in with the whole New England seaside cottage style of the rest of the house. I notice a couple Dentist figurines set up on a sideboard. Most have to do with yanking teeth out of mouths with pliers.

  Dr. Rosen is sitting in a wheelchair near the hospital bed and talking into a cordless phone.

  “Arnie?” blurts Monae. “Visitors. Christine’s police officer friends.” She reaches for Ceepak’s bagel bag. “Let me put those in the kitchen …”

  She leaves and Dr. Rosen raises a hand to let us know he’ll be with us shortly.

  The former dentist looks a little weary and shrunken as he slumps forward in his wheelchair. He’s wearing a navy blue Adidas jogging suit and Velcroed running shoes. His hair is white and neatly combed to the side. His upper lip sports a trim and very dignified mustache. There is an oxygen tank strapped into a hand trolley next to his wheelchair. Clear plastic tubin
g runs from the canister’s regulator valve up to a thin nosepiece jammed up into his nostrils.

  “Michael?” Dr. Rosen says to the phone. “I have visitors. Exalted members of the local constabulary.”

  He shoots us a wink. And I can tell, the guy might be ninety-four, but he’s still sharp, with it, and kind of funny.

  “Okay, Dad,” says the voice on the speakerphone. “But seriously, call the guys at Best Buy. They’ll come over and install it for you.”

  My eyes drift over to an adjoining room where I see the unopened cardboard carton for a Panasonic TC-P55ST50—their 3-D, high-def TV with a 55-inch-wide plasma screen. I also see unopened Amazon and Barnes and Noble boxes stacked on the couch. And on the floor.

  “It’s a very generous gift, Michael,” says Dr. Rosen. “But …”

  “No buts. I gave Best Buy my credit card number. They’ll hook up the satellite dish, too.”

  Okay. Now I’m drooling like Homer Simpson in a doughnut factory.

  “But,” says son Michael on the speakerphone, “the guys from Best Buy can’t do your exercises for you. Did Monae set up the recumbent bike?”

  “Yes, Michael. She and Christine put it in my bedroom.”

  “Good. It’s a Monark. Excellent for rehab patients.”

  “Michael?”

  “Yeah?”

  “The girls did a Google on the bike. Did it really cost you twenty-six hundred dollars?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to ask my accountant. I just told my people to get you the best low-impact exercise machine on the market because your doctors want you exercising.”

  “But twenty-six hundred dollars …”

  “Call it an early Father’s Day gift. Oh, here’s another one: I’m flying home to New Jersey next weekend!”

  The expression on Dr. Rosen’s face?

  I don’t think he’s looking forward to his son’s visit.

  14

  DR. ROSEN LOOKS UP FROM THE PHONE WITH AN EMBARRASSED smile, then raises his hand to let us know he won’t be on the phone very much longer.

  “Well, that’s terrific, Michael. It’ll be great to see you again.”

  “We wrapped our final episode last night. Thought it might be fun to spend some time with you. Whip those gals of yours into shape.”